A great loss (Page 1 of 7)

Yes, I just read that her novel was second only to the Bible.

The fictional character Jesus may overtake the popularity of the fictional character Scout, but then this makes Harper Lee into a Goddess who wrote the present-day bible of redemptive fiction that assuaged many of us to better understand the complexities good and evil, and love and hate.

Whilst I do feel sympathy for the bereaved and respect for the recently passed author herself; bring on the those feathers and tar...

"To Kill A Mockingbird" ? I don't really get it. As childrens genre books go, it's okay I suppose...  but it never fired me like others that I've read and I never quite got what all the hype is about? I suppose that it was one of the first YA books and possibly defined the genre, although as a youngster growing-up in London, England I never really got the connotations from the inherent racial divisions within the deep south of the USA.  All I knew of America at the time was 'The Fonz' and 'Scooby Do'.  I thought that American teenagers were all forty year old sanitized rockers and that all cartoon mysteries shared the same plot and three punchlines.   

"To Kill A Mockingbird" sells well because it is one of the mandatory childrens book titles within the schools English Lit curriculum (at least here in the UK) and has been for decades. As I mention, I'm not particularity enamored with it as a novel, but I've had to personally purchase three copies, one for each of my children in-turn as they traverse the school system. Lord knows what they do with book when they are done with it, but each requires a new copy when it is their time (along with the obligatory Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, of Mice and Men and Shakespeare Plays).

Thousands and thousands of parents buying these books year upon year as a course requirement for their disinterested student kids because some misguided intellectual soul feels that it is a mandatory classic.

It's hardly a best-seller due to avid readers choosing the title from the bookstore after perusing the shelves looking for something interesting.

I remember my mum moaning about buying me copy when I was at school. Intensely studying a book that doesn’t interest you is an excruciating punishment for a young teenager and I think I lobbed it into a hedge the first chance I got.

My comments represent a personal opinion upon the book and fact as to why it it such a  big seller. I welcome a challenge and if anyone is willing to show me the error of my ways and extol the virtues of this novel in the form of a review, then pop over to 'the write club;' the creative writing and literature discussions group forum...

https://www.thenextbigwriter.com/forums … group.html

...and we can debate the pros(e) and cons

Children are asked to read a lot of things that don't interest them.  That's not a knock on the book.  It may be a knock on the teacher who can't or won't bother to infuse a little life into it.

In a sense it was the right book at the right time.  It has at least as much literary merit as Browning's =How We Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix=, though maybe less that Sir W. Scott's =Marmion=, and both of those were once staples of primary to secondary education.  It could expose city kids to what it was like outside of the cities, and kids for whom racism was a distant threat to a taste of the real thing.

Harper Lee was not Shakespeare, nor Browning, nor Kipling, nor Scott.  She wrote a better than average book that spoke to her time and she was celebrated for it.  I think many of us would envy her.

A respectful pause for the death of a gifted human being.

But come on, folks! She wrote ONE book! And while it was a great book in its day, it reads dated and b-o-r-i-n-g nowadays. I'd wager a guess that it even seems condescending to some people. How insulting in modern times to say that a whole race is unable to solve their problems without the benevolence of one white man!

She said what she had to say, and it struck a note, but that's all she had. There remain plenty of other problems of the human condition that still need tackling, and other talented writers are working on them.

Harper Lee RIP  You inspired us all.

Stop a moment and think: All classic literature is dated. But the themes remain constant. Yes, let's give the lady her due credit.

Well, yes, something here does.

I'm not sure who your "come on, folks" is addressed to, jp? I'll assume I am among those you are addressing, since only a handful of us responded in this thread. I'll proceed under that assumption.

This is not a sound argument. Whether To Kill a Mockingbird was Lee's first or thirtieth novel, it is a work of literature and stands as itself. Your argument only makes sense if you also say things like, "Golly, this nickel would be worth five cents! But I only have one, so it isn't." In which case I will assume you are merely defying logic as part of your routine.

It's a fallacy to assume that the inefficiency of your own imagination is necessarily a measure of a book or its readership at large. If you're merely stating your opinion here (not "To Kill a Mockingbird is boring," but "I found it boring," then I respect your opinion, for I am bored by mathematics and happen to know it interests many. If what you actually mean is that the book itself is constructed to bore the reader, I wish you'd share exactly how that is accomplished, and how I overlooked it with my overhanging imagination, which is forever tangling me up in a work intended to be uninteresting.

As for your suggestion that To Kill a Mockingbird is outdated (with a nod to the copyright on the inside bearing the numbers 1-9-6-0), I'll hazard to suggest that it is an old book. Shakespeare offers a defense of a Jewish man in The Merchant of Venice. Outdated, boring story, or a photograph of a voice in history which sought to make an impact? What of Huck Finn? The Diary of Anne Frank is about something that happened before To Kill a Mockingbird was a spark in Lee's eye. Outdated? Irrelevant?

Passing over your very outdated use of the word "race"...

So Mayella Ewell has no play in the novel? There is not a single thing to be done for her, and she is portrayed as both awful and incredibly human. That isn't a factor in the novel? It's just Tom Robinson and Atticus? Black and white? The Boo story is just something Lee cooked up for a side story, in no way tied to the novel's theme? Scout's efforts to maintain her own identity in the face of Alexandra's iron rule? Not at all relevant then or now? Dill Harris as the deserted boy longing for love? Not relevant today? The Cunninghams as the scourge of the town. All of that is irrelevant in this new utopian century?

I'm not sure what your goal was in posting above. From the opening "come on, folks," to your strange red herring remark about other problems in the world and other writers, you expend 110 words to say absolutely nothing.

If what you mean to say is, "Hello folks! I've read To Kill a Mockingbird, and I have to agree with Dill. I found it outdated, and boring, and I don't know why people seem to so like it. I too would love to hear about this topic, and I intend to respect the fact that we all have different viewpoints, as that is the very center, soul and purpose of art, isn't it now? Cordially yours, jp," then pardon me for the above.

If what you mean to suggest is that everyone who loves the novel is wrong, you should base your argument on something more solid than the novel's age, singularity, or your own inability to comprehend its implicit layers. As for me, it is as simple as a love of the story, the people, the town, the writing, Scout, Atticus, and the integrity I sense in the author herself. As an intelligent woman educated to know my own mind, I defy you to come up with the argument which will convince me I am actually as bored by the book as you are.

My opinion upon the book was a totally subjective comment. We studied 'to kill a mocking bird' in school as children because our teachers were screaming liberals and it was the done thing. In truth as an English child I was never within the gun sight of mocking bird's agenda. I read the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and loved it; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and love, loved it. I read the Tale of Two Cities and love, love, loved it.  The Thirty Nine Steps  blew me away, my first page turner and I remember feigning illness to stay home because I couldn't put it down. Heart of Darkness and Frankenstein gripped me. These books, all classics in their own right raised emotions, led me on journey and rocked my young world. To kill a mocking bird did none of that to me. I never connected and I think that I resented the book because we weren't reading and studying something awesome and inspiring instead.

A straw poll in this house. My wife and three children all studied 'To kill a mocking bird' within their school curriculum and not one of them rates it as a favorite. No disrespect to the author... but it just didn't hit the spot. My kids? I couldn't pry the Harry Potter books, Tolkien, Suzanne Collins, Anthony Horowitz, Cassandra Clare or Rick Yancey from their grubby paws... but Harper lee holds nothing for them other than school work. They, like me remember it as a chore rather than a novel bound story that gripped.

My review of 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' combined with the reason I feel it is has achieved such a a success, follows in five words:

It has a great title.

Every story is dated before it is even written as there are arguably only seven basic plots (give or take a few according to individual fine tuning), so there is nothing new under the sun; but some of those so-called dated works are vastly superior to others. To Kill a Mockingbird in its telling just happens to be one of those superior ones to a great many folks. Would that we aspiring writers and critics could all be so outdated and flawed. Take care. Vern

Sorry, Poppa saying "I certainly am" feels to me like a great moment in personal courage, a slap in the face of a wicked orthodoxy.  Maybe it's better theater than prose, but I read the two together.

To be able to add anything meaningful to a debate about the prose, I would have to read the story again with the idea of picking nits. So far I've read it twice and I can't keep my workshop mentality forefront. I become immersed in the story and forget that it is writing instead of reading.

Memphis